Blog Post: Psalm 23 As a Tool for Creating Awareness

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psalm-23Creating awareness does not just occur from powerful questioning. Awareness can be created from most any skill used in coaching. The other day, my coach quoted a famous entrepreneur. The quote came from her listening deeply to what I was saying. When she finished the quote, I automatically made a statement about how I saw myself in that quote and then a gate opened up in my brain. She didn’t just tell me the truth. She unlocked my brain.

This same coach leverages creativity in her conversations. It’s always risky to be creative. You might come off corny. You might miss the mark. But the payoff for good creativity always outweighs the risk. I dare say all coaches should strive to be a little more creative.

You might argue, “I’m just not the creative type.” You don’t have to create from scratch. As Christians, we have at our disposal one of the most beautiful collections of imagery in a book that we call sacred. The Psalms are just true; they are beautiful. They are moving. They are inspiring.

One of my favorite lines is from Psalm 27. The Psalm starts with a statement of faith in God and then descends into a life under attack. He pleads for God not to forsake him. We cringe as we read, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.” How desperate is a person’s life when their own mother has stopped loving them?

The Psalm ends with these strong words:

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. – Psalm 27:13

Look at the strength of the words – confident, goodness, living. The Psalmist says something that I want to say, that I want to be true. It isn’t a trust in the future, a trust in heaven. It is an upgraded trust, a trust in the present. It’s going to be ok.

Psalm 23 As a Powerful Tool for Awareness

A Psalm that has certainly stood out as a classic is Psalm 23. As we transition into a Biblically illiterate world, I hope this Psalm will retain a place in our vocabulary. It is a touching Hebrew poem that touches on at least three stabilizing truths about life with God.

  1. Resources are never lacking with God.
  2. Fear is never a valid response with God.
  3. Goodness and love will always follow with God.

As I describe each section, let me also give an example of how I would use it in a coaching session.

Resources Are Never Lacking with God

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. – Psalm 23:1-3

There will be many times in your coaching sessions that your client will feel under resourced. If only they had more money or time or support or access, they would definitely be able to take appropriate action, but as it stands, they are stuck.

You are not stuck if the LORD is your shepherd. Click To Tweet

At CAM, we teach the skill of concise messages. We say that a concise message needs to be 7 words or less and be pertinent to the conversation. Verse 1 has eight words. Oh well.

A Christian coach, hearing a client lament about a lack of resources, could easily say,

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”

You will have the urge to do a little commentary. For one, you will want to say this is from the Bible, Psalm 23 in particular. You will feel the need to explain what it means to “lack nothing.” You may feel the urge to go on into the rest of the Psalm or at least reveal the big ending. DON’T! RESIST! STOP!

Concise messages are powerful exactly because they are concise. Speak the eight words and then let them do their work. Let the client’s mind stir with this truth. You don’t have to tell the client what to do with this verse. The client’s brain will unlock the vault of secret resources.

I was watching the classic Kevin Costner movie Dances with Wolves at a packed movie theater. Besides having a moving story, the movie is beautifully filmed. The wide expanse of the west was filled with herds of buffalo and wild horses. I was really moved… until the woman sitting next to me began her commentary. “Oh look at those horses! Aren’t they beautiful! Oh my! Wonderful!” At that moment I was fully aware of why God made “Do not murder” a top ten command.

You can just as easily be that woman in the theater. Let the words speak for themselves and watch your client begin to have deeper awareness of what is possible. You stay silent and eat your popcorn.

After giving the words a little time to sink in, the coach might follow up with “Where might you look for more resources the LORD promised to provide?”

Fear Is Never a Valid Response with God

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. – Psalm 23:4

There will be many times in your coaching sessions that you will recognize a lack of confidence. This lack of confidence could be in the client herself or a lack of confidence in the prospective actions or a lack of confidence in the client’s team. Coaching should always take a client’s confidence into consideration.

A lack of confidence can sabotage the best of actions. Click To Tweet

At CAM, we focus on coaching the person not the problem. We believe that a mediocre action taken with great confidence is more likely to succeed than a great action with mediocre confidence. Certainly our preference would be to help the client develop a great action and take it with confidence. But let me postulate that the greater the action, the more likely your client’s confidence will drop.

A Christian coach, hearing a lack of confidence, could easily say,

Though I walk through valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Again, you will want to commentate. You will want to use a paragraph of words that basically say the same thing, only this time you used 50 words. Why do we think 50 words communicates better than 15 words? It doesn’t.

These words won’t necessarily shore up all the fears your client has, but it may bring an awareness that fear can be overcome.

After the words sink in, you could follow up with another statement of truth. “Whenever anyone tries to do something great, lots of people will complain.”

Concise statements should always be true. I don’t mean to say that you might be tempted to say something false. At CAM, we push you away from concise statements because we know you will be most tempted to give suggestions or give a solution. There is little place for that in coaching. But a coach is definitely a truth teller. The coach can make concise statements of truth throughout the conversation.

You will know that you are using concise statements well when you notice your statement opened a gate for your client. Your client is flooded with much more awareness than you ever expected. They see possibilities that you could have never known.

Goodness and Love Will Always Follow with God

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. – Psalm 23:5-6

There will be many times in your coaching sessions that your client will have a thick fog surrounding the outcome they desire. You as the coach may be able to see the outcome very clearly, but you would be doing a severe disservice to your client by simply revealing the outcome to them. Instead, you want to dissipate the fog. This is done by creating awareness.

A coach’s job is to clear a client’s fog, not tell her what is beyond the fog. Click To Tweet

At CAM, we teach our coaches that their ideas are only a rental car for the client. We want our clients to own their own vehicles. In other words, our client should leave the session being able to see the future not just trust the coach concerning the future.

A Christian coach, hearing a foggy future from a client, could easily say,

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

In my experience, fog doesn’t clear up very easily. Resources are easier to find, and confidence is more easily built. As a coach, don’t get flustered when the fog doesn’t evaporate at the quotation of a verse. Don’t make the client feel like less of a Christian just because the heat of one verse doesn’t evaporate their foggy view of the future.

You could follow up with a powerful question. “When in the past has God anointed your head with oil or caused your cup to overflow?”

Spending time clearing the fog will help this client a million times more than you just giving them the first safe step into the fog. Don’t be tempted to do anything less for your client.

Conclusion

You don’t have to be creative to use imagery in your coaching. You need to be a good listener and know when is a good time to share some pithy truth. You need to be familiar with Scripture, and I would say be very familiar with some classic texts, such as Psalm 23, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and the Call of Moses [Exodus 3].

Learning to create better awareness will launch your coaching to a new level. In the comments below, tell me what Scriptures you like to use to create awareness.

1 thought on “Psalm 23 As a Tool for Creating Awareness”

  1. Hi, Brian,

    This was a very helpful and inspiring read. It really encouraged me to her creativity in coaching played a significant part in helping your bandwidth of awareness of that session.
    I’m always looking to hear and learn from coaches who spin their coaching sessions from a creative bend. I am especially encouraged to see read how you connected Psalm 23 with this topic and how God showed us how. in terms of embracing imagery and creativity….He is the ultimate Creator for which I am so grateful for. Being the creative type, it just gives me joy and the giggles :-)

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